Diocese hopes for re-energized Carle Place Episcopal church

A Carle Place Episcopal church that closed despite parishioners' protests will re-open in about a year, but with an entirely new focus the diocese hopes can re-energize a fading parish, church officials said Monday.

St. Mary’s shut its doors in late March, though long-time congregants said the parish had a $1 million endowment and active participation.

“It’s quite upsetting,” said Donald Schaefer, a top lay leader at the parish. With $1 million in the bank and the real estate worth even more, “Why close us then?”

Bishop Lawrence Provenzano, head of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, acknowledged the parish has built up an endowment of about $1 million since its founding nearly a century ago.

But he said St. Mary’s has essentially ceased to function as a parish, with no outreach ministry, formation programs, baptisms or confirmations, and is operating more as a rental hall for local groups.

Few people were attending services, he said, falling below the diocese’s minimum number of 25 to keep a parish open.

“The fact is that St. Mary’s closed itself more than a decade ago,” Provenzano said. With no active ministry occurring, “it’s just reminiscing about the 1950s.”

Parish lay leaders, including Schaefer, have insisted on using the 1928 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer instead of the 1979 version, which would bring the parish into the modern era, Provenzano said. That is one reason the parish has failed to grow, he said.

The diocese brought in a full-time priest two years ago for the first time in 25 years to try to keep the Carle Place parish afloat, Provenzano said, but the priest quit in February. In his resignation letter, the Rev. Sean Wallace said that of the remaining parishioners, most were no longer attending services or participating in parish life.

Schaefer said the parish was alternating between the 1928 and 1979 prayer books, in part because some people like the old version. He said numbers of participants dropped during the pandemic, but the parish kept an active congregation in part by live-streaming services.

He said he believes the diocese is mainly after the parish’s money, including the building and the land.

But Provenzano said that is not true. Instead, the diocese will let the parish sit “fallow” for about a year, he said, and then it will be re-founded with a new approach. There are many “unchurched” residents in Carle Place — people not involved in formal church life, including from other denominations such as Roman Catholic — who could be attracted to a re-energized, dynamic new parish, Provenzano said.

The diocese will bring in a new priest to start the process, along with several noted parishioners from nearby vibrant Episcopal parishes who hopefully will attract people to the new venture, he said.

St. Mary’s initially will not have a vestry or group of lay people who control it, but instead will be overseen directly by the diocese and the bishop, Provenzano said.

The diocese does not plan to sell the church building or the land, he said. Investment earnings from the endowment will be used to help the new parish get off the ground.

“It will be very different than the St. Mary’s that closed,” Provenzano said. “You start acting like a church in the 21st century and not in the 1950s.”

Provenzano said the diocese has a similar plan to refound a parish in Mastic Beach that closed recently, while another recently shuttered in Valley Stream will move to a better location in the same area.

“We’re not abandoning the communities at all,” he said